Birthday Wishes: Mark Ruffalo Smash

Mark Ruffalo, born 1967, is 46 today. Most mainstream audiences at the moment know him as Bruce Banner/The Incredible Hulk in the ongoing Avengers series, but they might also know him from the various indie and mainstream films he’s popped up in since 2000. Ruffalo is an actor in the same vein as John C. Reilly – he can play put-upon schlubby types better than anyone, but can also bring a focused intensity to serious roles, and then slip easily into more lightly comedic ones.

He got his first major start in Kenneth Lonergan’s You Can Count On Me, playing the brother of a single mom (Laura Linney) whose arrival after an absence of many years triggers reflection and turmoil on both their parts. (He later appeared in another Lonergan project, Margaret, in the small but pivotal role of the bus driver whose accident serves as the lynchpin for the plot.) He was in various films in the subsequent before exploding in three films h in 2004: as a stoned employee of Lacuna Inc. in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, as a cop on the trail of Tom Cruise’s hitman in Collateral, and as Matt, Jennifer Garner’s long-lost teenage love in 13 Going On 30, where he danced to “Thriller” amazingly.  His next major role was as Detective Toschi in David Fincher’s Zodiac, and a bit part in Where the Wild Things Are as the mute boyfriend of the Catherine Keener character. He had another triple play in 2010: as an FBI detective who knows more than he lets on in Shutter Island, as an unhappily married man in Date Night, and as a casual, perpetually stoned sperm donor in The Kids Are All Right.

He’ll have another three films in 2014 vying for attention. The first is the delayed Bennett Miller production Foxcatcher, with an unrecognizable Steve Carell and Channing Tatum. He’ll also appear in an HBO adaptation of Larry Kramer’s play about AIDS, The Normal Heart. Finally, he’ll star in a comedy with an absolutely amazing title; Infinitely Polar Bear.

Also born today:

Scarlett Johansson (29)

Marjane Satrapi (44)

Michael K. Williams (47)

Mads Mikkelsen (48)

Leos Carax (53)